Chapter8

Overcoming Obstacles in Implementation

Themes and Messages:
Reading apprenticeships work well for all types of students including special education students and English as a Second Language (ESL) students.
It is possible to overcome apparent barriers in order to implement reading apprenticship strategies in the classroom.

Key Questions for School Librarians:
How do school librarians help classroom teachers implement reading apprenticeship strategies within the confines of the curriculum schedule?

Strategies:
Buddy Reading (p.140)

• a very low-skilled 5th grader is paired with a 2nd grader
• the 5th grader reads a large quantity of young children's literature in order to recommend titles to the 2nd grader
• the 5th grader keeps logs of book summaries, new vocabulary words, and comprehension questions to ask the 2nd grader
• the 5th grader develops fluency and confidence as a reader while preparing for the weekly sessions

Repeated Readings (p.140)

• student picks a motivating text
• practices reading the text orally with expression while taping and re-taping their readings
• student produces a book on tape that can be shared with an appropriate audience

Reader's Theater (p.141)

• a good venue for building fluency and comprehension
• reader must decide meaning of passage in order to give the words proper emphasis and interpretation for the audience

Notes on the Chapter:
"Students who score lowest on the Degrees of Reading Power test... at the beginning of the year make the greatest gains through the reading apprenticeship approach." (p.138)
"Even the so-called best readers have much to gain from developing insight into their own sense-making processes and from gaining knowledge about the structures and conventions of particular texts." (p.139)
"Most often the lowest-skilled readers are held back not by an inability to decode but by a lack of fluency in decoding." (p.139)
"Students gain fluency by reading extensively in texts that are at their independent reading level - texts they can read with 95 percent comprehension." (p.139)
"Asking questions about the role reading will play in their futures gives students permission to set and reevaluate their own goals and the pathways they might take to reach them." (p.143-144)
Extensive reading on a topic from multiple sources "gives students the opportunity to encounter specific vocabulary and ideas from multiple perspectives." (p.145)